Buttermancan wrote:What on earth. I thought this may happen one day but I am shocked. Microtransactions, loot boxes and full games being sliced into chunks to sell to you at double the price. The greed of the big corporations will end up cannibalizing itself and they will blame it on the gamers and we'll have another videogame crash!!

So true, it getting worse everyday, it started in the 7th gen, but got out of hand in 8th gen.

matmico399 wrote:In a game now? That is beyond reprehensible!

Exactly this is real if you watch the video.

pacman000 wrote:The developer forgot that YouTube is free...& that you can pay for an ad-free version.

Except it in a full price console game, and mind you people can also use adblock to get around if you can not afford YouTube red, this is awful what console games have become.

djc wrote:If you are paying for the game it should NEVER contain supplemental advertising of any sort. This is a very slippery slope and I don't like it one bit.

While advertising has been a part of video games for literally decades (road signs in Pole Position, the easter egg Adidas Predator commercial in FIFA Sega CD, etc...) it should not be outside of the actual game content. Hell even NBA 2K19 referenced above contains a ton of in-game advertising from Gatorade, etc... Why have what are effectively commercials in the game as well?

Much like the mobile gaming market, I'd be okay with a free/reduced price game that contained ads but never a game you pay full retail price for.

They love putting mobile style crap in console games and it needs to stop as it should never be in a full price $60 game period.

Matchstick wrote:FYI, these ads are entirely skippable. It's a "feature" you can turn off in the main options menu. Not sure why they decided including ads in the game was a good idea (maybe to make it more lifelike, as actual NBA games are full of commercial breaks?) but you do have the option to turn them off.

I ran into this, myself, when I bought the game last week. Couldn't resist as it was only $3 on the Switch eShop. Very much worth the three bucks!

I know you like to stir the pot on this kind of thing, Sonicx9, but this is one case where you need to get your facts straight before you post. I spent all of 30 seconds searching the Internet about this very thing when I first played the game and immediately found I wasn't alone, the ads were optional, and that they were not a new feature added to the game, they were there from day one. Heck, I'll even cop your style a bit and post a link to an article about it:

Just chill, dude. Nice try at attempting to get everyone on these boards riled up *yet again* with another one of your pointless gaming "controversies." Awesome game for $3, with a stupid ad "feature" that can be immediately disabled entirely from the options menu. Try actually enjoying the game for what it is instead of immediately bashing it, especially if you haven't even played it yourself.

I am sorry, I got the info from RGT 85, and thought it was a joke, but still it still ludacris junk like this is getting allowed in console games. In fact djc said this best.

djc wrote:Optional or not, they shouldn't be there at all. Who is their right mind is saying to themselves "Wow this game is so great and realistic, I just wish it had commercials in it."

100% agree it a necessary feature that has no place in a $60 game even if it heavily discounted to $3 bucks digital.

Buttermancan wrote:I don't agree with everything Sonic posts on here. He often focuses on all the negative aspects of the industry but I think this is a topic worth discussing. Is it obvious in the game that you can turn off ads or do you have to search through menus? Regardless of this I think it is a terrible practice and this is how these things begin? In this iteration the consumer has the choice to turn ads off. Next year's game may remove that option all together! Or like in free to play mobile games you can pay to skip ads!!!

True I can be controversial, but glad you like it and you have good points that in the near future they could patch the ability to not turn of ads, or worse have microtransactions to turn off ads what a terrible thing to happen someday, hope it does not.

Gleebergloben123 wrote:As Matchstick stated, You CAN turn off the YouTube ads. So saying they’re unskippable is not true. If you wanna play the slippery-slope argument, fine. And if this really does get your blood boiling, fine. I can’t wait for the next drummed up controversy that I’M SURE the critic will agree with.

Regardless if you can turn on or off features like ads should never be in $60 games, remember the Xbox 360 dash board having ads when you are online that was awful.

CharlieR wrote:I did buy the game for that price. When I start it up, I will see if there is a way to turn them off. Ads in a $60 game is ridiculous, but if you can turn them off, I guess it's not terrible.

The controversy in my opinion is, is this game even playable without an sd card? It needed something like 32 gb just to download it! good thing I found my 64 gb card.

But you know ads in games can get worse over time. And about SD card issue, it the devs fault of cutting corners for a smaller cart and forcing consumers to download the rest of the game which is bad in itself MK11 anyone.

Voor wrote:What if they start offering discounted versions of games with ads? So you can buy a $60 version ad-free, or a $20 version with ads. How would that go over?

You have a good point, if they did that that would have been a little better, after all the ill fated Gizmondo did that have 2 sku one with ads and the others no ads, but the catch is because the Gizmondo was so unpopular and short lived, it never happened !

Skippable ads only lead to unskippable. I don’t like them. I have issues when I pay for something and am still subjected to ads. Why pay for cable television when I still have to watch ads? My big peeve now is those dang tv ads at gas stations. I’m paying full price for the gas. Why do I have this annoying tv blaring ads at me? When they first came out they had mute buttons. Guess what? Those mute buttons are gone. When I’m especially annoyed I’ll hit the help button and ask the attendant to turn the tv off. They of course say they can’t.

Tron wrote:Skippable ads only lead to unskippable. I don’t like them. I have issues when I pay for something and am still subjected to ads. Why pay for cable television when I still have to watch ads? My big peeve now is those dang tv ads at gas stations. I’m paying full price for the gas. Why do I have this annoying tv blaring ads at me? When they first came out they had mute buttons. Guess what? Those mute buttons are gone. When I’m especially annoyed I’ll hit the help button and ask the attendant to turn the tv off. They of course say they can’t.

This is what happens when the price of AAA games hasn't risen from its 90s 16-bit days compared to most other forms of entertainment and the reason why game development companies continue to reach into the college graduates pool and outsourcing for cheap labor -- in addition to making them work 80 hours a week without overtime pay during prolonged crunch times -- in order to minimize the cost of development of these games. Operating costs must be offset somewhere.

fod wrote:This is what happens when the price of AAA games hasn't risen from its 90s 16-bit days compared to most other forms of entertainment and the reason why game development companies continue to reach into the college graduates pool and outsourcing for cheap labor -- in addition to making them work 80 hours a week without overtime pay during prolonged crunch times -- in order to minimize the cost of development of these games. Operating costs must be offset somewhere.

They could also budget better by reusing more sets, props, costumes and polygon models (as if they were real actors, items, and locations), and hiring unknowns for their voice/motion capture cast. We're at the point where textures and polygon counts aren't much of a problem anymore, so it shouldn't be difficult to future proof them.

This focus on the long term would also allow/force AAA studios to be more creative with their stories, art direction, and game design, instead of redoing the same few gameplay loops over and over again, except with new stock characters and settings.

They'd also deal with a lot less problems if they rewarded their best employees, instead of treating them like cattle and acting surprised when they lose them. The useful time lost by replacing them as fast as possible is far more expensive in the long run.

They also need to give their employees more quality of life time between their work, so they can think more clearly. The only reason that doesn't happen, is because the executives are overgrown children who confuse abuse with executive decision making.

As it is, I have no sympathy for the game industry. They've brought this on themselves.